Lagos at First Bite
by Psychoflop
Summary: What measure is an enhanced Mosquito?


p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"Chapter 1: Egg and Larva/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;""Alright, get in the fucking van"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;""We're still here on Student Visas, you have no right to detain us"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;""Good luck telling the cops about this, no one will ever believe you"/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"It had long been rumoured that the British Colony of Nigeria had a secret government agency devoted to detaining (and deporting) people who had what could be described as, grey area statuses in the country (especially immigrants, students and workers). But each of the 8 people that were inside this large van had determined that if this had been the case, that they would've been sedated via tranquilizer darts (only to wake up in Benin, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, or otherwise on a boat somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean). The door had slammed shut and after a delay of about 10 seconds, the van was in motion. These were the only details each of them could make out for themselves, as there wrists and ankles had been shackled (by their captors at...knife point?) and black bags were put over their faces (though there were holes to expose their lips for breathing, and based on the size of the holes, this abduction was likely tailored for these exact 8 people)./p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;""Does anyone recognize my voice?" asked 1 of the 8 in desperation./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;""Dr. Stansfield? Yes I do recognize your voice. I'm Dr. Lintula" answered another in a thick Finnish accent./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;""Oh Niki, I'm so happy to hear from you again. You can call me Laurie. Anyone else?"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;""Dr. Debideen here Dr. Stansfield, I guess if we can call you Laurie now, you can call me Adam" answered a third in a deep, Canadian baritone./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;""Dr. Ellarby is here too, I presume?" asked Laurie./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;""I'm here Dr. Stansfield, I'm here. Call me Colleen" answered another (presumably) Canadian./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;""Dr. Fitch here, Call me Mike" came another Canadian./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;""Dr. Tota, sorry, Anthony" came another Canadian./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;""Dr. Ford, sorry, James" came another Canadian./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;""And based on the combined smell of Chanel #5 and cigarettes, I'm just going to assume that the 8supth/sup person in here with us is Dr. Williams?" asked Laurie./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;""Hey, I quit smoking 2 months ago. You're smelling my date from earlier this evening. Anyhow, call me Amanda." came another Canadian, who spoke faster than average, likely as a sign of stress./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;""So this WAS a planned abduction. I was taken while on a long distance phone call to the University of Chicago. The entomology department there owes me a favour or 2. Actually, I was trying to get as many of us jobs there as I could. How were each of you bagged?" asked Laurie./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;""I was leaving my boyfriend's house on my way to my girlfriend's house" replied Niki, slightly embarrassed as a polyamorous lifestyle was not a societal norm, even for a girl in her early 30's./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;""Colleen and I were leaving a planned parenthood clinic together. We don't care that we have to leave Nigeria soon, we're in love and wish to conceive a child" declared Adam, who sounded more than slightly frustrated./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;""Michael and I were at the Casino, specifically the Poker tables. Whoever did this knew to bag us when they were switching the pit bosses so as to not attract attention to themselves. But hey, we need a source of income from somewhere" replied Anthony./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;""Amanda and I had met up after her date at a bookstore. In retrospect, we should've met at a less quiet place. We were planning to cut our losses with Nigeria and head back to Canada while we still had enough money to pay for the plane tickets" replied James./p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"They soon arrived at an undisclosed location, well outside of the capital city of Lagos. By their estimation, they had been driving for nearly an hour./p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"The 8 of them had long since been separated into separate rooms. The thickness of the black bags over their heads was as such that no details of the room itself could be made out save for a large, energy saving overhead light about 12 feet above their heads. Laurie then began running under the assumption that there was a 2 way mirror somewhere in the room (a reasonable, but incorrect assumption)./p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Whatever you brought us here for, just get on with it" she shouted at the non-existent mirror./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Very well, Dr. Stansfield" came a relatively soft voice from behind her. Then came the steps of what Laurie guessed were 3 people trying to walk in perfect unison./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""You are head entomologist at the University of Nigeria?" came the soft, not quite masculine voice./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""I used to be, I lost my position there a few months ago, all 8 of us did" said Laurie in a tone that suggested that it was common knowledge and her interrogators should've known that already./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""I'm truly sorry to hear that"/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"To Laurie, that apology may have been the most sincere one that she had ever heard. And she was momentarily horrified that it came from her abductors./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Thank you, so I have no idea what use any of us are to you. If you need us to break into the University, we can't do it. Even if they haven't changed the electronic locks, we no longer have the credit card keys that we need to enter the building."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""That's not quite why we took you. We just...need to know about the events that lead to your dismissal."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""I had no idea that a labour board of any given country had the legal right to abduct whoever files a grievance"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""We don't represent them either. That's too...authoritarian of us. You really are just delaying your own freedom from us at this point"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"Laurie let out an exacerbated sigh. "Very well, it all started exactly 1 year ago tonight..."/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"emLaurie quickly recalls the entomology lab of the science department of the University of Lagos. It was about 3000 square feet and contained a dozen large stainless steel tables for students and faculty to work on, energy-reduced lighting throughout the entire ceiling and many lightly stained oak cabinets that contained hundreds of different Scientific instruments./em/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""7 of us already had doctorates in either Biology, Entomology or Zoology, and we were all going for second doctorates in 1 of the other fields, or in my case, my third. Our project was to genetically engineer Mosquitoes for use in blood transfusions between humans and animals. It was a strange cycle for several years, voluntarily donating a percentage of our salaries for the right to remain students knowing that as we also taught classes, we would be getting paid 3 and a half to 5 times the amount of money that we donated. It's something of a fun loophole to expose in this right-leaning libertarian Aaronworld that we live in. That and the many peaceful protests that go on as despite living under the British Monarchy, we're an Anti-authoritarian society."/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"The interrogator then unevenly slid a red Dixie cup of water to Laurie, who drank it all immediately./p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Usually I was the first to arrive for our lab every morning, but on this day, I was second, behind Niki. Niki is actually the one advantage that I have in this experiment."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""How so?" asked the interrogator, in a voice that suggested an...excess of saliva?/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Niki Lintula is already a product of genetic engineering. In her case, human cloning. It still baffles me how human beings could even be cloned in the early-mid 1980's, much less carried to term several hundred times all over the world. My guess is that the experiment was illegal and that most of them are still alive because it would create an entirely new form of genocide to liquidate them all."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""What is there to gain from killing her, or her scourge?" asked the interrogator./p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"Laurie actually had to think about that for a moment, especially that particular choice of words. "To keep it quiet. If the experiment that created her was illegal, you couldn't just kill them all or even a few of them at the same time without it eventually going public and bringing down those responsible."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""This, Dr. Lintula...is she aware that she is a copy?" asked the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Yes, she is. She grew up in a town in Finland called Tapiola and was contacted by at least one other clone. I don't know much about this part of her life, as if she was sworn to secrecy by a clone who values being left alone. She had thought she had a long lost twin sister, based on seeing someone who looked exactly like her while she was on vacation in England as a child (who I later found out was the clone known as Sarah Manning). But she has seen no less than 2 dozen of her kind since. It's funny, I used to have a friend back in Canada who I've talked to about this. Supposedly on other worlds, Niki was murdered to silence this. But due to some guy named Ferdinand not being born here on this world, this never happened. Anyway, Niki provided me with a large, silver external hard drive with her entire genome and other information courtesy of someone she only referred to at that point as 'her monitor'". She then later told me that her monitors' flight into Lagos was delayed but that he would provide any information I needed in exchange to keep it confidential. It was about then that Dr. Debideen and Dr. Ellarby had arrived, with some of their clothes slightly askew. It's no secret that they were lovers, and the university rule is that as long as they don't do anything on property, whatever happens between consenting adults is their business. They had weird smirks on their faces, so I know that they had probably even broken that rule, but I overlooked it. They're great doctors, and I personally hope that they do conceive a child, sooner rather than later. I had just begun to look over Niki's genome when Adam and Colleen began going over their own notes in insect DNA. Then Dr. Williams arrived, and while she wore the same lab coats we all wore, she wasn't technically part of our work. Recently, the university had formed an ethics commission designed to question every single aspect of the university's productivity. We were all still a little weary of her, but looking back now I think we kind of lucked out."/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Would you care to elaborate on that?" asked the interrogator./p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Well, in the few universities that can afford to even have an ethics commission, they tend to overdo their jobs. They will scrutinize so much that the universities cease to create anything. Amanda probably chimed in with 10-15 questions a day, and in fairness to Dr. Williams, she actually raised a few good points. On this particular day, she raised the question of ethics of effectively creating a slave race. My counterpoint was simple: Our goal was to actually go so far in the genetic engineering process, that they would be given the free will to decide for themselves if they wish to assist us. Even if 90% say no, we could have hundreds of thousands of willing workers who could save lives everyday. Then she asked us what we would do with the mosquitoes who declined, we answered that we would put them in an insect sanctuary or a zoo in a trade of some kind with goods to be determined. Amanda seemed at least vaguely satisfied with that answer, and let us carry on with our work. Dr. Fitch then arrived soon after. Apparently he had actually arrived on campus before I had, but had left to hit the chemistry lab to borrow one of their microscopes. He had come back, mentioning that he had bartered for 2 cases of glass vials. I had no problem sparing those, as we seemed to get more of them than any other department in the faculty. He was still installing the microscope when Dr. Tota had arrived, announcing that it was our time to use the 1 Quantum computer that was on campus. It was in the physics department, but they agreed to let other departments book time in exchange for trades. With us, we bribed them with enough Uranium-235 to sustain their nuclear physics department for 2 years, and that still only gave us 90 minutes a day during the week and 3 hours each on Saturday and Sunday. We then began prepping to move all of our work for the day to the Quantum Computer Lab, though Niki was a bit delayed."/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Is she mentally slower than all of you on account of her being a genetic copy?" asked the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Not at all. She took it upon herself to text her monitor in order to tell him to meet us at the Quantum Computer and not the biology department. I think that she also texted him a map of the campus, as I don't recall him being here more than two or three times before that point. When she nodded at me, I knew that we were OK to leave. We were a little more than a third of the way down the hall (an old beige hall from floor to ceiling) when Niki began waving at a man in a long oilcloth duster jacket and long reddish hair. At first I thought that was someone trying to dress like that version of my friend Aaron from the #EndG8 series, then I came to my senses and realized it was James Ford, Niki's monitor. To this day, I've never figured out why Dyad would assign a monitor to a clone who doesn't speak the clones native Finnish, but I'm sure there must be some logical reason behind it. Niki then handed James a black USB flash drive. I gave her a confused look, she said 'results from my last checkup' and I nodded, I didn't need to know anything further, well, one thing./p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"'What is your Doctorate in again, Dr. Stansfield?' I asked./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"'Evolutionary Developmental Biology, although I just say Evo-Devo for short' she replied with a faint smile./p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"We continued (after James filled out some paperwork) to the Quantum Computer. When we arrived, Dr. Williams jokingly declared 'OK everyone, don't try to make an interdimensional portal in order to reach Nth-dimensional space'. We all laughed, as we all...knew that #EndG8 reference"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"Laurie then paused and made a non-verbal gesture to her interrogator, indicating that she wanted another glass of water. She actually did want another glass of water, but the pause was so that she didn't accidentally reveal her own involvement with the events of that book, particularly the Battle of Philadelphia. It had been quietly discussed by her, Dr. Williams and Dr. Debideen and they all agreed to keep quiet as they would likely be committed to an asylum. And to the best of her knowledge, there was no asylum in Nigeria, so in all likelihood she would deported to one in Canada. Regarding the others: Dr. Ellarby, Dr. Tota, Dr. Fitch, Dr. Lintula all requested that Aaron-prime remove their involvement from the book for fear of harassment (fans of the book asked for autographs of Laurie daily). Where Dr. Ford was concerned, she had heard rumours that the Dyad institute was at least acutely aware that something had happened (Any scientific facility worth its' wait would've at least picked up on the massive amount of energy needed to take people out of this dimension and into another), and forced him into a full debriefing. Laurie could only imagine how much harassment James had been subject to since the book came out (from fans and Dyad employees alike). A second glass of water was placed in Laurie's left hand, she drank the entire glass in one go and continued./p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Dr. Ford was mesmerized by the size of the Quantum Computer. Most people don't understand that the rules of the microprocessor that apply to their computers and smartphones at home don't apply to Quantum Computers as they're too powerful. We have the smallest one in the world and it's double the size of an IMAX theatre. Someone came by with 3 vials and a syringe and handed them to James. He began collecting blood from Niki. He said something to the effect that it was standard procedure, but I knew that something else was up"/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"Chapter 2: Pupa/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;""So Dr. Lintula, tell us how your role in the study progressed over the following weeks" gently demanded her interrogator./p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"Niki fidgeted in her chair for a moment, which adjusted her light blue blouse but not her black hip hugger jeans (which was her intent) before she began "I was a key to the study because they needed to do with the mosquitoes what was done to my sisters and I over 3 decades ago: Copy what they did with one mosquito to many, but instead of several hundred to a thousand (as was done with my sisters and I), they needed to replicate several million mosquitoes. Admittedly, not even I know all of the details as to how I was made, even with my education. I imagine it would take one of my fellow clones with Dr. Stansfield's background (a degree in evolutionary developmental biology) and an I.Q. bordering on genius to know everything, and even then, as much as I hate to admit it, Dyad would probably have to help along the way (which they have a history of not doing unless it serves their self-interests. So I requested the files from Dyad (sometimes through Dr. Ford, sometimes not) and they would provide them with minor redactions as they pertained to info about the scientists behind the project (which might have helped us if we needed follow up information)."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"Niki then began fidgeting again, this time to reduce a considerable amount of pain in her lower back. She then continued talking "We then began working in concert with a group of scientists who were working out the Zika virus via the Mosquito genome in New York City. Their sequencing of a Mosquito's DNA was diced into short fragments due to their lack of a Quantum Computer. In essence, they were trying to piece together an album based on bits of recordings made under pressure from the musicians (which Abbey Road and Made in Heaven are 2 of the very few examples of this actually working). With our Quantum Computer, we originally had these fragments overlap on occasion but the computer itself formed continuous strings of letters"/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;""Which letters did you use, exactly?" asked the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;""A, C, G and T. Just like the human genome. Now with regions of any given genome with too much variance among the species or long stretches of repetitive DNA, even our computer was stuck. So we took a look as to how the chromosomes fold, then we made maps to show how frequently different stretches of the genome come into contact with one another. We call it the Hi-C method (high chromosome, not the popular American drink). We used the Hi-C method as a guide to infer the proximity of the different genome fragments. But even then, we only cracked about 94% of the entire genome, so we filled in the other 6% ourselves."/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;""To what end?" asked the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;""Make the mosquitoes efficient to carry the most blood possible, smart enough to have basic freewill and sterile enough to not transmit any disease. Admittedly, this didn't work with the first mosquito that we tried. In point of fact, it took us several thousand just to get the first one that worked. The majority of the mosquitoes who failed died within minutes. Autoimmune issues, mental retardation, some died so quick we have no cause of death to assign"/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""So what made you travel from Tapiola, Finland to Lagos, Nigeria? Don't you Dyad guys just assign new monitors to clones whenever they move any significant distance?" asked the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"James was not used to an outsider being so accurate with how his employers worked, it actually took almost a minute before he answered "In general, you're right. Once it's established that they're far enough away where the current monitor is impractical, we would appoint a new monitor. There are 2 exceptions to this rule: 1. When the situation requires the monitor to move with the clone to keep up appearances (we have a clone in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada whose monitor became her husband) and 2. When they're so antisocial that attempts at having a full time monitor actually do more harm than good (and there's dozens of them all over the world now that they've all become self-aware). I'm sorry, I answered your second question first, so allow me to answer your first question second: While most countries are welcoming towards Dyad and the jobs we create (both through our company directly and through other our network of other companies), it's somehow harder to infiltrate underdeveloped nations, namely in Africa. We actually lost 2 clones completely for decades because their surrogate mother fled to South Africa during the apex of Apartheid. Oddly enough, we found them again in Toronto of all places a few years ago, but our efforts to monitor them have proven impossible, especially the one who spent her childhood in the Ukraine and may have killed a few of her own kind over the years. Anyway, we couldn't get a new monitor to Niki in time as the students and faculty at the University of Nigeria had no interest at being on the Dyad payroll."/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""In time? There's a time-based protocol on being a monitor?" asked the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Unless the clone grows to reject the monitor, we try to cycle out the monitor every now and then (unless, again, they get married or something). We used to cycle out the monitor every 2 years but some clone in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada figured out the pattern, so we try to randomize the timing nowadays. If anything it makes for a more realistic scenario (as most human interaction is not done on clockwork in one's life). Anyways, when Project Leda began, we rendered all of the clones except for the 2 who were taken to South Africa sterile as the concept of a clone conceiving a child was considered insane. The process that did this has eventually lead to the clones developing an autoimmune disease in adulthood. Simply put, Niki has been overdue to start developing it for the better part of the last half decade. My collecting of her blood upon my visit was the fastest way for my bosses to know if she had already started to develop it or not. It wasn't by any means cheap either, do you have any idea how much it costs to ship vials of blood to the nearest Dyad office (in Rome, Italy) with low risk of breaking the vials? Dyad had to promise a crate of mixed antibiotics to the local chemist just to push it through customs"/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Did she have it?" asked the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"James nodded before answering (despite the black bag still being over his head "Stage 1, lower back pain. I was able to get the cure injected into her thanks to a French doctor with blonde hair whose name eludes me at the moment. I think the cure was created by this doctor with the assistance of another clone who unfortunately didn't live long enough to see herself be cured. The clones in Africa were the last to get cured as it's very hard to get into this continent. I only had a few minutes with this doctor before Niki was brought in, and when I tried to broach the subject of her dating a clone, it was like she had no actual love for the clone that she was in a relationship with. I've heard stories about monitors who have no feelings towards who they're monitoring at all, but most do eventually take at least some semblance of caring, myself included. In fairness to this...Dr. Cormier, that's it, she has been travelling the world for the last 3 or 4 years, and has seen well over 200 girls who look like her ex-girlfriend, she was probably numb from the sorrow of seeing what her ex didn't live long enough to see for herself. We kept the nature of this cure's development classified from Niki, and I protested that. It would be one thing if the clones weren't self-aware but short of living somewhere so remote that you have no internet access or even access to a telephone, these girls know that they're copies. Oh well, that's Dyad bureaucracy for you."/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""So what was your role in the experiment after the first Mosquito was created, Dr. Debideen" asked his respective interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""When so many of them started dying before we created one successfully, I knew that we were going to experience similar problems afterwards, as well. I took it upon myself (with Dr. Stansfield's approval, of course) to develop a Quantum Computer program to monitor the lives of the Mosquitoes after they're created. Dr. Ford was surprisingly helpful in his frequent travels between here and Dyad."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""How so?" asked the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Well, there was a sort of data collection program that was developed by a Dr. Aldous Leekie that did something similar with the clones. Despite mosquitoes being simpler life forms, my program had to be more elaborate as we're making millions of mosquitoes as opposed to just a few hundred humans. It was so sad at first, as we used the exact same method for the later mosquitoes as we did for our first successfully engineered one but they were still dying by hundreds, if not thousands. It reminded me of my attempts to start a family with Colleen."/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"Adam then began to cry, "Sorry, we've been trying to have a kid for so long. And we were high school sweethearts so I think that this may end our union. We've talked about marriage but she isn't interested, and I will forever honour that. It's way too much interference from the government for it to be worth it. I'm glad I don't live on an Aaronworld where governments use marriage to manipulate the tax system, how vulgar"/p  
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p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"The interrogator, in a moment of compassion, elected to pause the asking of questions. They hoped it would give Adam enough time to regain his composure. He did, but only for (at most) 30 seconds./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""You're that remorseful about the inability of creating life, but showed a lot of skill in copying and modifying life? You will forgive me for appreciating the irony?" asked the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"Adam shook his head hard enough where the bag over it barely stayed on./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""These tears are not over my sorrow with Colleen, these are for what we did in that lab. We never should've even started tampering with mother nature. First we invent antibiotics to help us fight relatively basic diseases, then they become resistant and we can't adapt fast enough, then we use pesticides over our food in order to preserve them for human consumption, then nature adapts to be immune from them. We begin genetically modifying our food for either aesthetic reasons or to enhance their size, and pretty soon humans will be diagnosed with new cancers. And somewhere in there, a corporation succeeds in copying a human being several hundred times, then they wonder why there's an underlying prejudice in society when the project goes public. I will regret being successful in this project for the rest of my life, however long that is"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="CENTER"*/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="CENTER" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"To this interrogator, Colleen seemed distant, even cold at first. Over time though, they knew that it wasn't the case./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""So once we knew that there were gaps in the DNA of the copies no matter what we did, we decided to branch out to other life forms for their DNA to fill them in. But in the end, we went with human. Nowhere near enough to make some sort of human/mosquito abomination hybrid, but enough where we thought that the freewill that we wanted our results to have would be guaranteed. It felt like we were editing one person's research papers into another person's research papers, but they both spoke different languages. It took several weeks to get it right, and even then, we were still losing mosquitoes by the hundreds, every day. It reminded me of all the times that Adam and I, tried for ourselves. Our bedroom, in the car, even on safari during summer break. I've basically accepted that we can't do it without the help of some kind of fertility clinic, but the ones in Africa are at least a generation behind the rest of the world. Why can't Aaron write more worlds where the economy is a more level playing field?"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Why were you one of the ones who asked to be left out of the #EndG8 series?" asked the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""I value my privacy to a point where I was scared to even date Adam, much less be in such a long term relationship. But he's a near-perfect man, like Aaron wrote this version of him just for this version of me. I hope the original me was nice to the original Aaron before he...died"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"The interrogator was well aware as to what really happened to Aaron-prime, but decided not to bring it up./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="CENTER"*/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="CENTER" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Did you remain skeptical about this experiment from beginning to end, Dr. Williams?" asked the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Indeed I did, It's what I was paid to do. But even from a personal point of view, I oppose imposing modifications to a species that is incapable of providing consent. Frankly, I'm not even the biggest fan of imposing modification to an individual that does provide consent."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""At least your principles are consistent, I'll give you that" stated the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""But not even I was prepared for what happened next. I was in the lab early one Sunday morning, reading a copy of 'Prague of Hard Knocks'. I actually own 2 copies of that book, a regular copy that I bartered for at a bookstore near campus with...my body. And a signed copy that Aaron gave me before it hit stores, I keep the signed copy in a safe in my home...anyways, I was nearly finished reading it when I saw the previous day's results on the desk, I'm presuming that Dr. Stansfield left them there by mistake. I admit that I was wrong in deliberately infringing on the work of others, but I was reading only and had absolutely no intention of copying the work. They had perfected the procedure to the extent where they were now making several hundred a day that actually survived more than an hour, and that alarmed me to no end. If they created copied mosquitoes any faster or if the mosquitoes were any bigger, they would've had to put in a request for an assembly line to the board of science...that sadly, even I would've approved of with results like that. I went back to reading after only a minute or two, then I frantically dropped the book and put my hands to my ears."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Had the fire alarm gone off or something?" asked the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""No. Had something like that happened, I would be halfway to the designated emergency exit with the alarm barely registering in my brain as I've participated in several university-mandated fire drills. This was closer to a loud series of shrieks that I eventually determined was coming from the tank of successfully modified mosquitoes, my ears were even bleeding, if only briefly. To this day, I'm not sure if the noise had subsided a little or if I had just gotten used to the noise, but after a couple of minutes, I removed my hands from my ears. I didn't think that life so small could make noise that abrasive. I immediately stuffed cotton balls in my ears in order to absorb the blood, but only had them in my ears for about 5 minutes. The shrieking remained, but my instinct was telling me that they knew that they were being too loud and lowered their volume. But to truly believe that was to go against all rational thinking. But still..."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""...it was the only logical answer that you had at the time?" finished the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""If that information was made public, I'd either be committed to an asylum, deported out of Nigeria even faster, or both" stated Amanda with a tone of worry./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""I don't find it crazy at all, for what it's worth" said the interrogator, who may or may not have been sincere./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Thank you. But do you find it crazy, that I noticed that the shrieking was being done...to a pattern?" asked Amanda./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""A pattern? Please explain" asked the interrogator, whose interest had been piqued./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""The shrieking after 20-30 seconds began to have percussive qualities, it would stop and start intermittently. Despite being the one who was most adamantly against this experiment to begin with, this was a finding that I (as a scientist) was required to share. My first attempt to reach out was to call Dr. Stansfield."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Makes sense, she was the lead scientist...sorry" interrupted the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"Amanda waved it off with her right hand before continuing "My attempts were unsuccessful, then I remembered that she was booked in for hip replacement surgery that day so even if I got a hold of her, she would be coming off of whatever anaesthetic they gave her. So my next call was Dr. Tota"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="CENTER"*/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="CENTER" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Yeah, she called me second behind Laurie. I may never know why I was her second choice but I was there on campus within 30 minutes. It might have been sooner, but I had...company the previous evening and..."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Who you shared a bed with the previous evening is none of our business, Dr. Tota. Stick to the matter at hand" stated the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Very well. Actually, I think that I do know why Dr. Williams called me second: I can run the Quantum Computer better than anyone on campus. When I arrived in the lab, Amanda already had the mosquito tank on a wheeled cart, ready to roll, pun not intended."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Was it just you and Dr. Williams who went to the Quantum Computer that day?" asked the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Not exactly. When we arrived at the Quantum Computer, Dr. Fitch was already there, bribing the tech department with gift cards to some restaurant, I have no clue as to which one and I don't wish to make a guess."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Fair enough, please continue" stated the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""We had 87 minutes to do what we were going to do. Dr. Williams asked Dr. Fitch and I to jury rig a microphone to the Quantum Computer, then aim it at the mosquito tank. I'm something of a musician as a hobby, so the audio engineering aspect was no issue for me. It's just that, the quantum computer wasn't really designed for this, so it took me over an hour to effectively turn a quantum computer into a recording studio"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="CENTER"*/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="CENTER" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Was Dr. Tota successful, Dr. Fitch?" asked the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""He was, but it only left us with 19 minutes before we had to clear out for the geology department minus whatever time it would take us to restore the Quantum Computer back to its' default settings. The microphone was an old Sennhauser, which Dr. Tota connected to an old oscillator, then through to a laptop Dr. Williams brought with her to record what we were hearing. We are forever in debt to Dr. Tota for that, as it not only confirmed Dr. Williams' guess that there was a pattern, but we were able to translate it."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Translate it?" asked the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""We tried altering the frequency of the mosquitoes shrieking to see if they had learned to speak English. When that didn't work, Dr. Williams (in a major eureka moment), blurted out that it might just be old-fashioned Morse Code. None of us actually knew how to speak it, so Dr. Tota actually looked it up on Wikipedia. With 11 minutes to spare, we worked out the letters"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""And what were they, exactly?" asked the interrogator sarcastically./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""W-E-A-R-E-N-O-T-S-L-A-V-E-S" replied Dr. Fitch repeatedly until the interrogator banged the wall, saying nothing. Michael was pleased to have had his moment of fun against his captors./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""I then asked Dr. Tota if the oscillator was capable of making it's own vibrations, he nodded. Dr. Williams then demanded that we reply back, something simple, but a response nonetheless."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""I would ask what you came up with, but I'm more inclined to ask about how simple you needed it to be" stated the interrogator, having calmed down./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Nothing more complex then what they created for us. And in the end, only 3 words were needed: W-E-A-R-E-S-O-R-R-Y. If only the European settlers had said this to Native Americans centuries ago"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"Chapter 3: Adult/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"Laurie had needed a moment or two in order to regain her composure, they all did at this point./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Was the fallout as severe as it usually is in any scientific breakthrough of this magnitude?" asked the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""I suppose that it was, but in the wrong direction. The University's board of science wanted to scrap the project entirely, as they were too scared at the concept of us making mosquitoes so intelligent that they could actually communicate with us. Even Dr. Williams wanted to continue this project, and she was the resident sceptic on the team."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="CENTER"*/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="CENTER" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""And you don't believe that them wanting to scrap the project was a conclusion that they came to of their own freewill, Dr. Fitch" asked the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""No. During the appointment with the board of science, they all looked so scared that it seemed like they were reading a prepared statement at gunpoint or something. This is nothing more than an educated guess but, I believe that the Nigerian government became aware of us the moment the James arrived on campus and put pressure on the faculty from the moment that we were close to the breakthrough"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="CENTER"*/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="CENTER" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Would Dyad have put pressure on the government to put pressure on the faculty to scrap the experiment, Dr. Lintula" asked the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""No, I want to make that perfectly clear. I have an extremely reliable source regarding this matter."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Someone inside Dyad itself?" asked the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Not exactly. I have a friend who hacks them routinely from a laptop back home in Finland. Sometimes she hacks them from Toronto too, sometimes not. She's, quite simply, the greatest friend that I've ever had"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""I'm assuming that this is another clone" stated the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""I suppose I am that transparent" answered Niki, sinking her head in shame./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="CENTER"*/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="CENTER" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""It became increasingly clear what our next move should be, given that the majority of us came from anti-authoritarian backgrounds and societies. We set the mosquitoes free, all of them, knowing full well that we would be losing our jobs, probably never to find work at any university ever again" stated Dr. Tota./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Forget that, do you have any idea what you just did to the ecosystem? Not only here in Nigeria, but the rest of Africa, if not the world?" asked the interrogator, who was sounding completely horrified./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"Anthony shook his head before replying "I don't think it'll be an issue at all. In fact, as we made them intelligent enough to have freewill, I think that they'll cause less of a problem. The animal kingdom, while by no means perfect, is something that I find to be less fundamentally flawed than the human race."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""That's a bit strange, you preferring animals to human race" stated the interrogator. Anthony burst out laughing./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""I'm sorry. I was just reminded of my friend's favourite philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer. He would apparently refer to his pet dog as a human whenever the dog did something wrong. I suppose that deep down, we're all misanthropes. But in answer to your query, yes, I do prefer animals to humans"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="CENTER"*/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="CENTER" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""My conscious is quite clear, actually"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""And why is that, Dr. Debideen?" asked the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"Adam took only a short pause before beginning "Because the mosquitoes we made were not just bigger and smarter with a sense of freewill, but they were made to remain non-lethal with enhanced immune systems. Now I grant you that mother nature will likely find a way to circumvent what we did, but these guys can fight off Zika and West Nile Virus with the greatest of ease so it should be at least a generation or 2 before that happens."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="CENTER"*/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="CENTER" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""We were dismissed from the university not even 2 days after we set them free. We all saw that coming, even me"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""I'm not sure whether that was the right decision or not on their part, for what it's worth, Dr. Williams" stated the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Suspensions would've been more appropriate, and loss of tenure for Dr. Stansfield as she was the only one of us who had tenure to begin with."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Have you a new job?" asked the interrogator, who actually sounded genuinely concerned./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Not as professors, or anything to do with any university in the whole United Kingdom. When one is dismissed in this manner, it spreads like wildfire across the academic community (and did long before the days of the internet). Oddly enough, we have been receiving offers from universities from outside of the United Kingdom. We'll eventually take them, when our severance packages run out"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""You were given compensation even though you were terminated with prejudice?" asked the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"Amanda nodded with the black bag over her head "It's in our contracts, short of actually breaking the law we get 1 year severance pay if our contract is terminated early. Once I pointed out that freeing an animal from captivity was not only not breaking the law, but would tarnish the reputation of the university if we went public, they gave us our severance immediately. I love corporate and academic blackmail"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="CENTER"*/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="CENTER" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""So what have all you been doing with your time off?"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Well, the mass dismissal never affected me directly as I was just a 'guest' of the study and not an actual university employee, so I never got fired. I was required to attend a debriefing via video chat with my superiors at Dyad, but never faced any discipline for my involvement. Niki elected to stay in Nigeria and enjoy a bit of time off, at my suggestion. I've been helping her cope with the loss of this job as (to the best of my knowledge), it's the first time she's lost a job in her entire life. From a medical standpoint, I was also corresponding with Dr. Cormier (who is now back in her native France) regarding following up Niki being cured of the clones Auto-immune disease. Niki has not had the back pain return, and her blood work is excellent, 1 more check-up and she's all clear"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Is everyone else enjoying what is essentially a paid vacation?" asked the interrogator./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Very much so, but everyone agreed to start looking at job offers about a month from now. But there seems to be a melancholy amongst everyone, like they fell in love with Nigeria or something"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="CENTER"*/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="CENTER" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"There had been a draft in Colleen's interrogation room for the entire duration of her stay. One supposes that the black bag coming off of her head was probably inevitable. What Colleen had not expected however, was the sight of her interrogators.../p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"...they were Mosquito, not human./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Based on 7 weeks being the average lifespan for a female mosquito, You're the 8supth/sup generation of what we started. If however you're male, that would put you around the 33suprd/sup generation, give or take 3 generations at most. That's always fascinated me, how a male mosquito only lives around 10 days compared to the 42-56 days that a female lives."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"Her entire speech was that of someone who was horrified, and one could not blame her: The biggest mosquito she had seen to this point was around 8 cm from nose to ass (slightly larger than 3 inches). If she had to guess, her interrogator was 2.6 metres using the same measurement (about 8 and a half feet)./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""How is this possible?" asked Colleen, who was now crying./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""We think it's a side effect of the 5.821% of the DNA you had to fill in when you couldn't crack our ancestors genome in the lab. One thing you hadn't counted on was our nearly insatiable desire to reproduce."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Forgive me, I'm more shocked that your evolution has included human speech, much less eloquent English" said Colleen distantly (as she couldn't help but stare)./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""We think that you used some Chameleon DNA, as our adaptive instinct is...vast"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"By now, Colleen had estimated that the Mosquito's proboscis (stinger) was over 1.25 metres (4 feet) long with a diameter that suggested that the only reason that Colleen (or any of her colleagues) were still alive was because the mosquitoes allowed it. Then this super-mosquito began walking towards Colleen, who decided not to move, having accepted what she thought was her fate.../p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"...except that the mosquito merely cut off her restraints with its' proboscis, then...hugged her. It took a moment for Colleen to process what was happening to her, but she eventually reciprocated the hug./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Thank you for creating us" whispered the mosquito./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""What do you want from us?" asked Colleen./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""All we want is to be left alone"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""That'll never happen, especially here. Most people will actively hunt you because they don't understand your right to exist. Especially here, as this Nigeria has a lot of strife."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Could this be caused by being under a British monarchy?"/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""It probably doesn't help" answered Colleen dryly./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Then help us overthrow the government" stated the mosquito. Colleen eventually nodded./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"Epilogue: Ascension/p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""How did you get a new key card?" asked Amanda, about a week later./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Being an employee of Dyad has its' perks" replied James with a grin./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"Breaking into a university was considered was a felony (as it was supposed to be protected private property), but it didn't matter anymore to Dr. Williams./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Is this helping the Mosquitoes?" asked James./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Nope, something bigger" whispered Amanda as they walked down the hall. They eventually reached the quantum computer. James, having read (and participated in) "Prague of hard knocks", knew what Amanda was trying to do./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""Did you not learn anything from the #EndG8 series?" shouted James, not even caring about getting caught by campus security at this point./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT""I did, and I have no intention of opening a portal big enough to walk through. That said, I want to talk to other people on other Aaronworlds, a sort of interdimensional Facebook, if you will." stated Amanda with a smile./p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT" /p  
p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"James...was intrigued./p 


End file.
